Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

Edited by Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek

The fullest and most systematic treatment of this important aspect of classical reception

Shows how ancient plots were assimilated into the classical repertoire, and explores the social and cultural implications

Illustrated with archive photographs and musical examples

Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

Edited by Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek

Description

Opera was invented at the end of the sixteenth century in imitation of the supposed style of delivery of ancient Greek tragedy, and, since then, operas based on Greek drama have been among the most important in the repertoire. This collection of essays by leading authorities in the fields of Classics, Musicology, Dance Studies, English Literature, Modern Languages, and Theatre Studies provides an exceptionally wide-ranging and detailed overview of the relationship between the two genres. Since tragedies have played a much larger part than comedies in this branch of operatic history, the volume mostly concentrates on the tragic repertoire, but a chapter on musical versions of Aristophanes' Lysistrata is included, as well as discussions of incidental music, a very
important part of the musical reception of ancient drama, from Andrea Gabrieli in 1585 to Harrison Birtwistle and Judith Weir in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

Edited by Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek

Table of Contents

1. Precursors, Precedents, Pretexts: the Institutions of Greco-Roman Theatre and the Development of European Opera, Roger Savage2. Greek Tragedy and Opera: Notes on a Marriage Manque, Michele Napolitano3. Incidental Music and the Revival of Greek Tragedy from the Italian Renaissance to German Romanticism, Jason Geary4. Phaedra's Handmaiden: Tragedy as Comedy and Spectacle in Seventeenth-Century Opera, Wendy Heller5. Dance in Lully's Alceste, Jennifer Thorp6. The Ghost of Alcestis, Amy Wygant7. The Rise and Fall of Andromache on the Operatic Stage, 1660s-1820s, Suzana Ograjensek8. Opera Librettos and Greek Tragedy in Eighteenth-Century Venice: The Case of Agostino Piovene, Robert C. Ketterer9. Ancient Tragedy in Opera, and the
Operatic Debut of Oedipus the King (Munich, 1729), Reinhard Strohm10. Establishing a text, securing a reputation: Metastasio's Use of Aristotle, Michael Burden11. The Gods out of the Machine . . . and their Comeback, Bruno Forment12. Who Killed Gluck?, Simon Goldhill13. The Metamorphosis of a Greek Comedy and its Protagonist: Some Musical Versions of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Simone Beta14. Taneyev's Oresteia, Michael Ewans & Anastasia Belina15. Crossings of Experimental Music and Greek Tragedy, Christian Wolff16. The Action Drama and the Still Life: Enescu, Stravinsky, and Oedipus, Stephen Walsh17. Sing Evohe! Three Twentieth-Century Operatic Versions of Euripides' Bacchae, Robert Cowan18. Re-staging the Welttheater: A Critical View of
Carl Orff's Antigonae and Oedipus der Tyrann, Nicholas Attfield19. 'Batter the Doom Drum': The Music for Peter Hall's Oresteia and other Productions of Greek Tragedy by Harrison Birtwistle and Judith Weir, David Beard

Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

Edited by Peter Brown and Suzana Ograjensek

Author Information

Peter Brown is a Lecturer in Classics at Oxford University, a Fellow of Trinity College, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. He has published extensively on Greek and Roman drama (mainly comedy), and his translation of the Comedies of Terence appeared in the Oxford World's Classics series in January, 2008.

Suzana Ograjensekis a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Unversity of Cambridge, and a former Research Assistant at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama in Oxford. She is a specialist in baroque opera and has worked extensively in Handel studies.